project upstate: living room

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Last year while preparing to become a family of three, we started the hunt for a bigger apartment a la the multiple posts on decor ideas, and inspiring spaces here, here, here and here. I had a whole vision in my mind of what our next home would look like and was pinterest’ing away in prepration. That said, it never wound up happening. We put the whole thing on hold when I reached month 6 of pregnancy, simultaneously becoming defeated about the relationship of cost vs. space you get in return. We both agreed to stay in our small apartment, focus on new baby and revisit our living situation down the road.

Now that we are ‘down the road’ (Vida is 9 months on April 19th), we did away with the idea of moving all together. Yes, our apartment is small and many/most of you probably wouldn’t be able to live with a baby in such tight quarters. But for us, it totally works which changed the trajectory of our plans in their entirity. Instead of upgrading here in NYC, we are keeping our apartment and bought a house upstate to retreat to on the weekends. A place we can spread out, entertain friends, have outdoor space and relax in. We figure we can store the majority of our crap there, and live simple and minimal down here. When we began discussing this as a potential plan, I wasn’t sure we could make it all happen. But I stay true to the words I preach and we are crafting our reality in a way which fits our lifestyle. It’s not for everyone, but it satiates and nourishes our needs. It gives us the opportunity to have (and give Vida) the best of both worlds, a country and city life, which in the end, for us, trumped a bigger primary home. If you follow along on instagram, you saw that we closed on a house in February, and have been settling in since. It was a complete ‘pinch me’ moment, and I’ve been thanking my lucky stars and feeling grateful ever since. I’ve posted a few snaps here and there on my page (and will continue to do so), but as things unfold, I decided to document the progress here too. If nothing else, a diary for me to look back on and inspiration to share with all of you too.

So now that we are onto the decorating, my hours of pinning have been put to use. Above is a current vision board I created for our living room (to fill the empty space shown in top photo). Our den, which was the first room we tackled is shades of grey, pink and white so I am aiming for this room to tie back in order to create cohesiveness. Dina requested we use more saturated tones here, so while the color story is similar with pink’ish hues running through both spaces, the color will be less muted. We haven’t pulled the trigger on any of the above pieces, but this is my starting point.

We are taking our time to carefully make choices for each room, and it will likely take years to complete the entire house. But as we go, I’ll keep you posted on the updates and progress!